I want to start off by saying I’m Cali raised (it’s CA all day), but I was born in Memphis, TN. I had no choice but to be a Memphis State (now known as University of Memphis) fan. My entire family is from Memphis. My grandmother, aunt, and uncle all went to Memphis State. I watched Anfernee “Penny” Hardaway play HS basketball. My All-Time favorite basketball players are: 1) Michael Jordan 2) Penny Hardaway 3) Kobe Bryant. I had the chance to meet Penny at the NBA All-star game in Houston and he gave me a pair of my favorite Penny Hardaway shoes. I grew up wanting to play basketball for the Tigers. To say I’m a fan is like saying Tiger is good at golf. I even drove down to AZ this year with my family to watch Memphis take on Missouri in the Sweet 16.
If this ain’t throwing salt in the wound I don’t know what is. 07-08 was supposed to be our year! The sting of losing the National Championship because of free throws is still there! Now we go from 38-2 to 0-40 in an instant, or at least however long it took for University of Memphis to receive a fax saying they were being stripped of all wins from the 07-08 season. I’m really confused about the concept of taking back wins and retroactively declaring Derrick Rose ineligible. The NCAA has a lot of rules and a book thicker than War and Peace, full of tedious regulations and procedures, but those are the rules that govern collegiate sports and rules must be followed. When teams break rules there are consequences.
I understand that the record books will be changed, but you can’t “undo” the fact that we won 38 games and played in the Nat’l championship. Since we now won 0 games who played in the NCAA tournament in our place, and who played in the championship game? Derrick Rose was declared ineligible, so did he not play college basketball? It makes no sense. Taking wins back is kinda like a lawyer saying something in a courtroom and the judge saying “the jury will strike that from the record”. Too late, they heard it already! Good thing we didn’t win the Nat’l championship game because this would be even more convoluted. The NCAA gets a big “Child Please” from me!
There was obviously some wrong-doing by the University, SAT, and countless others but taking back wins. Impossible! For Tiger fans the immediate future looks bleak. Kentucky stole our players and our coach, NCAA took away all our 07-08 wins, we have to pay the NCAA tournament money back, Derrick Rose never went to Memphis (so essentially he was drafted straight out of high school), CDR has no comment, and first 48 keeps making Memphis look really really bad. We have nothing left, you can take all these things but YOU LEAVE ME MY WINS!!!